- IS now behind country’s deadliest terror attacks
Russia and China shouted themselves hoarse in the past few years while pointing to the grave danger posed to Central Asia and South Asian region (that’s us) by the Islamic State, in a farsighted effort to keep the enemy out of their own vulnerable gates. But their logic was confronted by two fixated mindsets, a naïve state of denial in Pakistan, exemplified by the former interior minister’s claim of no IS presence, and the US’ obsession with Haqqani network, that made it oblivious, by gullibility or ulterior design, to the far greater threat presented by IS fighters fleeing from Iraq and Syria, and seeking fresh killing fields. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, however, minced no words in an October 2017 interview that the IS was a US creation, and its bases were facilitating spread of the Frankenstein monster all over Afghanistan.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost for all. Findings of a local think- tank, Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, while showing an overall 16 percent decline in terror incidents during 2017, with TTP still the chief assassin, ominously reveal that six terror assaults claimed by IS took an appallingly high toll of 153 innocents killed, in its (so far) targeted Balochistan and northern Sindh. With this ruthless entity gaining ground, the portents augur ill, both for Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially after the rudely accusatory New Year tweet by President Trump and its escalating bitter aftermath, which will ultimately, unless sanity and realism prevail, adversely affect vital intelligence sharing, apart from putting the Pakistan military under tremendous strain in its heroic battle against multiple terrorist groups.
There is still space to avert a future unmitigated disaster. At home, the ready answer lies in urgently ratcheting up the effectiveness and implementation of the 20-point National Action Plan and of the National Counter-Terrorism Authority, and the finalisation of National Internal Security Policy (whose draft is presently being vetted), with an ideological counter-narrative. But these measures demand an immediate end to the ‘blame game’ between the country’s ‘same page’ antagonists, their close collaboration and a lowering of adrenaline-charged political tensions. Their thinking should now consist of doing.
